Like everyone in America I wanted that Powerball winnings.
It's F-You money. I want F-you money.
Oh well, off to the salt mines.
I received an email from a man from USC. He is a Ph.D. student and they are doing research on the personal experiences people write about on the web/blog about their lives. My blog got his attention he claims. They wanted to ask questions to those who write a blog.
They wanted my opinions as well as ask me to take a survey. Then they will be collecting this data to refine, evaluate and analyze. He gave me his professors info and email as well as his own. He said if I had questions to call and gave me a number to call as well as his email.
While it all seemed legit, I just thought I'd call to see for certain and discuss with him.
I called and it was a number that was invalid. Hmm.....so, of course, negative nelly here figured this was like a prince in Africa who needed help getting his millions. So I responded to the email stating the number was invalid and my humorous thoughts on the Prince in Africa scenario.
He wrote back to me. He transposed the last 2 numbers. Oh, it's real. Even sent me to the school to do my due diligence as well as a you tube video. So I took the survey. It was interesting.
Rick said why would I assume it wasn't real? I showed it to him and he said, "But it looks real."
I'm sure the first sucker who tried to help that prince in Africa thought so too.
10 comments:
Skype is another venue for the African imposters - oh boy do I have fun with them ....
You have to have your guard up these days don't you Peggy and take nothing at face value.
Oh no you don't do that on Skype!? Oh my goodness that is something my hubby would do. That is so funny. I would never have the courage to do that! Besides I would probably end up giggling. Thanks for stopping by.
LOL someone contacted me like that once and wanted to do an interview somewhere but I was busy that day. Later I was thinking they probably wanted to kidnap me.
Oh Julie, good call. I would never meet someone. Answer a survey on the USC web? Easy peasy, meet them, no way!
I don't think it's a bad idea to be skeptical about stuff like that at all. At least you'll never be one of the victims!
I think I got one of those requests years ago. I passed on it.
Being a skeptic is a good thing, I think. And really, none of us know who we're dealing with on the other side of the screen, you know?
I started blogging in 2005. I've had a ton of spam and scam stuff, but mostly they leave me alone.
My dad got a call from someone he thought was my nephew (his grandson) and ended up sending something like eight thousand dollars to bail him out. I wish he'd called me first so I could have told him about the grandparent scam. You just can't be too careful.
Ami, Oh I am so sorry about your dad. I can see my parents doing things like that which I suppose is the reason they go after older people who only assume the best. They grew up in an era when the majority of the people were not so damn nasty.
I did participated in a blog survey for a college student several years ago. Asked her to send me the results at the end. Never heard back from her. Kind of sad when you volunteer personal type information for something like that >:-(
Carma, the info asked was not personal. I found it rather generic unless asking my opinion. It was all online. No names, nothing like that.
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